


The Broken Tiles of Our Mosaic

by bricoleur10



Category: Chicago Med
Genre: Background Jay Halstead/Erin Lindsay, Discussions of Suicide, Dr. Charles is the wisest of them all, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Near Death Experiences, Sexual Content, Will and Jay doing brother stuff, canon-typical amounts of violence and medical gore, protective big brother Jay, so many feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 14:16:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7175318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bricoleur10/pseuds/bricoleur10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“What?” He asks tiredly. “What do you want, Connor?” </i>
</p><p><i>The other man blinks owlishly at him for a few long, drawn out moments. In the background, the hubbub of Molly’s steadies on – people talk and laugh and drink. A few of them love. Fewer still hate. The whole world continues to spin and exist and flourish and rise and fall and rise again and again. And then there’s the two of them, Connor Rhodes and Will Halstead, standing still in a den of chaos.</i> </p><p>Or: The one where Connor and Will navigate the perimeters of their newfound relationship, Will gets kidnapped, Connor overcomes some of his trust issues, and Jay is an awesome big brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, after binge watching Chicago PD, and then accidently also binge watching Chicago Med, I appear to have fallen headfirst into this whole Connor/Will ‘ship. I wasn’t even looking for a new one, but damn it if these two didn’t take hold quick. Also the Jay/Will brother relationship – I’ve always been a sucker for a good brotherly dynamic (thank you Supernatural). 
> 
> I took some leaps with the backstory on the Halstead brothers. I don’t think I altered anything that’s been directly stated in canon, but all references to their pasts and family (especially their respective relationships with their father) are super vague and leave a lot of room for filling in the blanks, so I went ahead and played with that.

***

“You know that trouble that I wasn’t in, when I came back to Chicago?”

Jay knows that tone of voice, knows it far better than he’d like, and hearing it now makes his eyes narrow and his spine straighten with intent. Every instinct he’s got is on red alert: _protect his brother at all costs_. “What did you do, Will?” 

***

Connor catches him right outside his apartment. He must have had to park a ways up the street, because he’s out of breath by the time he gets close enough to clasp his hand down on Will’s shoulder. 

The sudden touch makes the redhead flinch and turn around sharply, arms already halfway up in a defensive move he can’t quite control and wouldn’t even if he could. 

Too many years living in the same sphere as cops and criminals. 

“Whoa,” Connor takes a step back, mouth open slightly in a pant. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” 

Will snorts but lowers his hands. “Then don’t sneak up on me in the middle of the night.” 

***

“You want to know why your brother left when your mom was dying.” Erin’s voice is soft and firm. Jay’s heard her sound exactly like this too many times to count – talking to victims. She’s got a way with words. “He wasn’t running away.”

“You don’t know that.” Jay snaps at her, and he knows even as it’s happening that she doesn’t deserve his anger. She’s going to get it anyway because he trusts her. Because he knows she can take it and not break. 

“Okay, maybe.” She relents. “But at the very least he wasn’t _just_ running away.” She steps closer to him. “Jay…your dad needed money. For your mom.”

“He had health insurance.” The detective argues. “He was a cop. We’ve got one of the best medical plans –”

“Her chemo wasn’t covered, not after a while.” She interrupts him. He lets her. “When it got worse…I didn’t understand everything Dr. Rhodes said, but...” she takes a deep breath, steeling herself. “Her last few years…she only stayed alive that long because of experimental treatments. Medicine and procedures that wouldn’t’ve been covered on their insurance. Jay…Will got that money.”

Jay feels like he’s breaking in half. “How?”

***

“Dr. Halstead.” 

Will freezes. _Fight or flight_ , he screams internally. _Fight or fucking flight. Choose one. Choose one now before you die._

“It’s been quite a long time.” Damien Williams has this way of talking; like his voice, his whole being, is infused with so much absolute power that everyone has to stop and listen, no matter how softly the actual words come out. 

“I don’t work for you anymore.” Will forces himself to say. His declaration is followed by the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. 

***

“I didn’t mean to bail on you tonight.” Connor says, he ducks his head almost like he’s embarrassed. Will wonders how many people have seen the mighty Connor Rhodes look like this. “I…I don’t know, man. I just needed…it was a rough one.”

Will recalls saying something very similar to Connor himself a few hours ago. So he just nods, because while the statement is still true it doesn’t explain anything. Like why Connor had skipped out on meeting him at Molly’s or why he’s here now. 

“You think I could get a raincheck?” He half-smiles – _fucking adorable_ , Will thinks before he can stop himself. At the same time, he notices that the other man’s eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. 

“You came all the way here to ask me for a raincheck?” He cocks an eyebrow playfully, but it must not read right, because Connor’s face falls. 

“Never mind,” he mumbles. “I don’t know why I…shit.” He scrubs a hand over his face roughly. Will gets the impression that it’s not the first time he’s done that this evening. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow, alright?” 

He’s barely turned around before Will says, “Connor, wait.” 

It happens too fast for him to realize in the moment that those two words, this decision, will fundamentally alter the rest of his life. 

***

Jay slams his way into the ER – or ED, he supposes they’re calling it now. Emergency Department. He’ll never understand that. 

He weaves around three gurneys and the handful of doctors and nurses that cross his path; he’s been here enough times to know who’s in charge. 

“Maggie,” he says, as soon as he gets to the desk. It’s not a shout, but there’s enough force behind it that he knows he won’t be ignored. Seconds later her attention is on him. Seconds feel like too long. “Where’s my brother? Have you seen Will?” 

Usually he likes saying _Dr. Halstead_. It’s a pride that he’ll indulge in whenever he’s sure that Will himself isn’t around to hear it – kid’s head is too inflated for his own good already, but Jay gets a kick out calling whichever hospital the younger man is working at and saying, “I’m looking for Dr. Halstead, is he around? I’m his brother.” 

It’s one of the only things he’d willingly – happily, even eagerly – shared with Erin about his family, back when they were both still nervous around the edges and revealing only little bits of themselves at a time: _“Yeah, my dad is…I don’t really wanna talk about my dad. But my brother’s a doctor.”_

Maggie Lockwood barely knows him, but she seems to understand the implications of Jay calling his brother _Will_ in this moment rather than _Dr. Halstead_. Maybe it’s intuition, maybe it’s too many years working in a place that’s literally got _emergency_ in the title. Maybe, though, maybe it’s just him. Waving panic through the air like a war cry. 

“He hasn’t been in today.” She tells him. Straight to the point. “He was supposed to be here over an hour ago. I’ve tried calling him.” 

An hour is no good, Jay thinks, taking a step back and cursing to himself. An hour tells him nothing. 

“Hey,” he sees a man he vaguely recognizes, from coming here for work and to visit his brother. “Hey, Dr. Road, right?” 

The man in question stops and looks at him. Almost immediately Jay doesn’t like him; gets a read off of him that reeks of entitlement. Still, no time today to cherry pick.

“Rhodes.” The man corrects, but he changes direction and starts walking towards him. “You’re Dr. Halstead’s brother, right?” 

Of course he probably already knows that – cops stick out like sore thumbs in hospitals, and Will’s probably caught his fair share of crap for being related to one. But still, this man starts the conversation like that, opens it up for more immediately. And that’s when Jay sees it – the burning chord of concern lurking just behind the aloofness in the other man’s expression. 

***

“Drinking alone, bro?” Jay sits down next to him without any preamble. 

Will snorts despondently into his whiskey. “Was supposed to meet somebody.” 

“Aw, I’m sure she’s got a good reason for standing you up,” he says, only half-mocking as he pats his brother on the back. 

Will’s head shoots up, surprised by the leap Jay had taken. “What makes you think it’s a girl?”

“You wanna tell me you’re not over here pining after a crush?” Jay laughs. “Will, if it’s a guy that’s got you lookin’ like that, then there’s a longer conversation me’an you are gonna have to have.” 

***

Will takes a step back, and then another one closer. Connor’s just standing on the sidewalk, staring at him like he’s waiting. Which he is, because Will had just asked him to. 

_My brother thinks I have a crush on you._

_I don’t have a crush on you._

_Natalie’s pretty and I want her to have my baby, too._

_You’d look good with a baby._

_It could get my hair and your everything else._

_Have you ever fucked a guy?_

_Do you want to?_

“Will?” Connor asks, looking a little concerned and a lot annoyed. 

Will shakes himself away from his thoughts. “You wanna take that raincheck now?” At the other man’s perplexed expression, he jerks his thumb in the direction of his apartment. “I have vodka. Probably. Definitely tequila.” 

“Tequila?” Connor echoes. 

He sounds confused, so Will elaborates. “My brother’s girlfriend wanted margaritas.” 

When Connor laughs, all of that hurt and anger and nervousness from before melts away. “I could go for some tequila.” 

***

“Damien Williams.” Will whispers into the phone. He knows he doesn’t have much time. “I worked for him for a while in New York. As a sort of… personal physician.” 

“And he’s a criminal.” Will cringes at Jay’s words. He doesn’t even bother phrasing them like a question. 

“No.” He says this more emphatically than he’d have to if he truly believed his own declaration. “Not technically. I’m not a moron.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

“Because I need your help.” Will bites. He has no right to be angry with Jay, but he is. “Damien’s here. In Chicago. He said he needed me to help someone he knows, someone who got hurt.” 

“And you told him to go to the hospital.” Jay knows they wouldn’t be having this conversation right now if that were the case. 

Will bites, “The loaded gun he had pressed against the back of my neck made me feel like that wasn’t really much of an option.” 

“Will,” Jay sounds suddenly much more alert. “Are you in danger right now?”

The younger Halstead glances up at the mirror in the bathroom he’s in, notes the way the blood from the cut on his head is already starting to clot – that’s promising, he thinks, and allows himself a moment to self-diagnose. Because the blooming bruises on the side of his skull _could_ be indicative of some internal rupture. 

“Yeah,” he breathes, voice getting lower as he hears footsteps approaching from outside. “Yeah, Jay, I really think I am this time.” 

***

“Yeah, I’m Dr. Halstead’s brother.” Jay repeats the other man’s words right back at him – a little mocking and a lot challenging. “How well do you know my brother, Dr. Rhodes?”

“We work together.” The other man shrugs, but he leans back a little and that’s enough for Jay to know that he’s hiding something. 

“You guys get along?” 

“Not really.” Jay sees it when he swallows thickly, but at least he knows better than to outright lie. “We bump heads a lot, but Will’s a good doctor.”

“You guys ever spend any time together outside the hospital?” He takes a step closer to the self-entitled asshole who’s most definitely not telling him the whole truth. He’s in no mood right now to be lied to, not even by omission, and this guy is about learn firsthand the consequences of catching him on a day like today. 

“Drinks here and there.” He shrugs again, too hard. 

“You the one who bought him that Malibu Rum?” He tilts his head quizzically. Innocently.

“Will’s allergic to coconut.” 

Dr. Rhodes realizes his mistake a moment too late, cringing at his words and their implications. The other man is smart enough to have figured out exactly what this is, Jay has to give him that. In many ways, Dr. Rhodes probably _is_ smarter than him; a doctor with a dozen years of school under his belt. Put them on a game show together and Jay wouldn’t stand a chance. But, Dr. Rhodes isn’t a cop, isn’t used to interrogations and mind games, the brutality of a back and forth like this. 

Jay uses that to his advantage, and latches onto his blunder. 

“Where were you last night?”

“At home.”

“Alone?” 

“Yes.” His gaze narrows, and for a second he tries to play offensive. “Why?”

“Because I’m asking you why, that’s why.” Jay snaps. He’s done with even the flimsiest illusion that this is anything other than a verbal assault. “When’s the last time you talked to my brother?”

“That’s none of your damn –”

But Jay snaps before Dr. Rhodes can finish through with his angry retort. Jay bypasses civility all together and lunges at the younger man; pushing him up against the closest wall he sees and lodging his forearm firmly into his windpipe. “Does it seem like I’m playing around with you right now?” He asks, close enough to the other man’s face – his eyes are wide now with fear, that’s a promising response – that he barely has to whisper to be heard. “Huh?” He shoves just a little bit harder. Maybe too hard.

In the background Jay can hear commotion – someone noticed, obviously, what had just happened, and in his head an internal timer starts. Panic response, confusion, reaction. He’s a cop and this is a hospital. He has time. Not a lot of it, before someone pulls him away from Dr. Rhodes, not enough to do any _real_ damage, even if he wanted to, but some. 

“No,” Dr. Rhodes rasps, coughing and struggling to get away from the oppressive weight that he knows – both instinctively and as a medical professional – will kill him soon. “Man, what do you,” he has to stop again to suck in as much air as his body will currently let him. Jay gets a sick thrill from watching him do it. 

_Protect his brother at all costs._

“What do you want?” 

“I want to know. When was the last time you talked to Will?” Jay smiles impatiently. “That shouldn’t be so hard for a smart guy like you to wrap your head around.” 

“ _Jay_.” It’s Erin’s voice behind him. Right at his shoulder though he hadn’t heard or felt her approach. “Jay, stop it. This isn’t helping anything.” 

It takes a few seconds longer than it should, but eventually Jay lets go, watching as Dr. Rhodes sputters and coughs, bent over and running a hand over his neck while other doctors, friends and coworkers, crowd around to take a look, to treat and protect. Together they act to shield him from Jay. The outsider. The attacker. The _cop_. 

They might have gotten away with it, too – keeping him away from the man he’d just assaulted, forced him to take a step back, let Lindsay and Voight handle it, follow protocol, waste time – but Dr. Rhodes himself is the one to break the line of defense. He approaches Jay almost as soon as he gathers his bearings. The others try to stop him, and a Korean man that Jay is almost positive is a Vet stands defensively at his side when it does it, but Dr. Rhodes isn’t backing down. 

“What happened to Will?” 

It’s not the right thought to be having in the moment, not by a long shot, but Jay decides then and there that he wouldn’t mind it if this man became a permanent fixture in his brother’s life. 

***

Connor kisses like he does everything else – confidently. 

He cups the side of Will’s neck and tugs until he gets what he wants. They’re sitting side-by-side on Will’s sofa – even though Connor could have easily taken the chair on the other side of the coffee table, or at the very least the other _end_ of the couch. But he hadn’t. He’d sat right next to Will almost like he’d been _craving_ the other man’s presence next to him. 

“You know what I like about you, Halstead?” He’d asked, three drinks into the evening. 

“My dazzling wit?” Will had joked, trying to remember if this was _his_ second or third glass, and how many exactly he’d had at Molly’s. 

Connor had shaken his head. “No,” he’d sniffed once and leaned back. His eyes were a little hazy and Will had smirked because, could it be? Is Connor Rhodes a fucking lightweight? “It’s that you don’t break. You…you bend sometimes, like because you think you have to. But you snap right back, and it usually fucking hurts. Like a…like a bamboo rod.” 

Will had laughed outright; he hadn’t been able to help it. “Man, if that was supposed to be an insult it wasn’t a very good one.” 

Connor had frowned, a little too deeply in conjuncture with the moment they’d been having. “It wasn’t an insult.” 

“Okay,” Will had made sure to sound soothing. “Well, it wasn’t a very good compliment, either.” 

“That’s because you don’t know what I’m really thinking.” 

He’d licked his lips and made a face. “What are you thinking?”

That’s when Connor had lurched forward and grabbed at the back of his neck, pulled until their lips had met. 

Will goes still in the other man’s hold and absorbs all sorts of things at once. Underneath the whiskey and the faint sent of disinfectant still lingering from the hospital, Connor smells like the forest on a crisp fall afternoon. Like leaves and grass and tree bark – nature and freedom. 

His lips are soft. So soft that for the first few seconds Will thinks that the shock of this has robbed him of one of his senses. But no, the sensation is there. Wind chimes tinkling in the distance. That’s why he starts moving, honestly. He’s not sure how long he’d stayed still, initially, but he starts moving against the other man because he’d wanted to feel so much more than he had in the first breath. 

Connor releases a breath between them, the second one, and Will knows that this one is relief. 

That’s when Will pushes forward, gets his own hands on Connor’s sides, runs them up until they’re exploring the expanse of the other man’s back and shoulders. Their lips continue to move against one another’s and Will’s not sure what it is – the alcohol, maybe, or the truly unnatural softness of Connor’s skin – but a kiss has never felt so effortless before. 

There’s no thinking or planning or fighting. Each moment blends seamlessly into the next, every move countered like pieces of a dance they’ve both known for years. Connor pulls, Will pushes. One reaches for the hem of a shirt in the same moment the other brushes at a belt buckle. 

_Intimacy_ , Will thinks, with the tiny little part of his brain that’s still doing more than just feeling. _Maybe this is what intimacy actually is_.

***

“No, Will had a practice in New York.” He’s pacing in front of Mrs. Goodwin’s desk. Lindsay and Voight are hovering somewhere behind him. Dr. Rhodes is sitting in one of the chairs. He seems almost calm. “He was a partner in some…I don’t know. Plastic surgery, I guess. Rich women that got a lot of boob jobs.” 

_“I also did cleft palates. No one ever mentions the cleft palates.”_

“And cleft palates.” He echoes the memory. “They did those, too.” 

“Will said…in his initial interview here, he said he also spent time in Sudan?” Mrs. Lockwood is trying to help, but to Jay it all just sounds like static. A script he already knows. 

“He did work there after he left New York.” Jay agrees between gritted teeth. “But no one in _Sudan_ kidnapped my brother.” 

“You don’t know that’s what this is yet.” Lindsay tries to comfort him, but he shoots her a look that’s near murderous, because she should know better. 

“We’ve got Mouse pinging the last signal your brother’s phone picked up.” Voight jumps in, trying to soothe with logic the way he does sometimes. Usually in hostage situations. “But right now, Jay, I need you as a family member. Not a cop. Can you do that?”

Jay looks at Dr. Rhodes, who’s been silent since they all got to Mrs. Goodwin’s office. Their eyes meet and Detective Halstead – not Jay Halstead, concerned brother, but the _Detective_ in him – reads the other man’s face like a book he could recite from memory: _Help me. Help him. Get him back. I’m trusting you._

Jay shifts his gaze to his partner – Erin, god he loves her so much – and tries to get her to see how sorry he is for what’s about to happen. Her face falls because she can read him, too. 

He turns to Voight. He doesn’t have to say it out loud. He does anyway. “No.” 

***

Will’s breath catches when Connor pushes into him. He bites back a groan because it’s been so long – maybe too long – since he’s let himself have this. 

“Hey.” Connor’s hands are on his face, a thumb brushing over his cheekbone gently. “You okay?” 

It’s too much in the moment, to look in Connor’s eyes. Will’s always been told that he’s got an expressive face – too much so, Jay used to say: _you wear your heart, your head, your everything right on your sleeve_. But Connor’s eyes are worse. Deep, dark pools of every thought that crosses his mind, the good and the bad. There’s no bad in them right now. 

But still he looks away. They should have done this differently, but Will isn’t one to show his back to anybody; not willingly. Connor had forced that out of him once – desperation in an elevator – and Will should have known then that they’d get here eventually. Because Connor had forced him to turn his back, had gotten right up on him, and Will had still trusted him afterwards. Maybe even trusted him _more_. Because in a lot of ways Connor had saved him that day. 

“Hey,” Connor says again, and shifts a little, just enough to make Will gasp. “You’re thinking way too hard right now.” 

“Can’t help it.” He gasps. Leave it to two doctors to have a rational conversation in the middle of sex. “I can’t…” he trails off because he really doesn’t know. 

“It’s okay.” When Connor says this, something within the other man seems to shift. Will glances back up at him because he has to, because he’d felt something so visceral that he has to see the corresponding expression, has to know what it means. “You’re okay.” Connor is telling him, eyes shining bright and absolutely wonderful. “Just breathe.”

Will hadn’t been there for his brother the way he should have been after Jay had gotten back from the army. He’d been a coward on that front, though Mouse’s hands had been far more capable than his own back then. What he had done, because _coward_ and _cruel_ are two very different animals, was pick his brother up from the airport the day he’d gotten back. And the look on Jay’s face that afternoon is one that he’ll never forget. It was the look people wear when they’ve fought a war in order to get home. 

Connor’s soul had just shifted. Will had felt it. And now the man inside of him is looking at him like; _finally, yes finally, I’m here. I’m where I belong. I’m home_. And while Will isn’t sure what wars Connor had fought in order to get here, he’s sure now that he had won each and every of them.

“It’s okay.” Will smiles softly. He runs a hand through Connor’s hair and nods. “I’m okay now. You can move.”

***

Damien’s fist lands like iron; Will gasps and then groans. As soon as he can, though, as soon as his body lets him, he gets his eyes back on his attacker. “You won’t break me.”

He’d known, even at the very beginning, that working for Damien Williams came with certain risks. He hadn’t thought himself immune to them back then, wasn’t stupid, but was too lost in grief and guilt to care about the consequences of his actions. It’s oddly fitting, that it had taken this many years for the fallout to strike. He’s stronger now. He’ll fall harder. 

Gregory Barnett is dead. Will hadn’t been able to save him and Damien will make sure that no one else survives, either. They’re alone in a place Will doesn’t recognize and his only form of communication has long since been shattered. He’d given Jay everything he could in the time he’d had, but it hadn’t been enough. _A day late and a dollar short_ , their dad always says. _If your brother can’t save you, no one can_. 

“Maybe not.” Damien kicks him then, right in the kidney, and Will’s doctor brain makes a mental note to check for blood in his urine in the coming days, just in case. His rational brain dismisses the precaution. There won’t be coming days. “But I’m going to have a lot of fun trying.”

He hopes Connor knows that it could have been more between them. So much more. Everything, maybe. 

He hopes Jay knows how much he loves him. How hard Will had fought to get to a place in his life where Jay would feel proud to call him his brother. 

He hopes his old man knows that Will forgives him. Had forgiven him years ago, even if he’d never managed to say it. 

He hopes Erin sticks by Jay, helps him deal with the grief. 

He hopes Connor doesn’t use his family’s money to name a hospital wing after him when he’s gone. 

He hopes Dr. Charles is able to help the others. 

He hopes that the world misses him enough to need a little help. 

“If you’re gonna kill me then just fucking do it already.” Will spits after the fourth – fifth maybe? He’s having a hard time counting anymore – blow lands. As impatient as he’s always been, only this time it’s because he’s not sure how much more his body can take. “It’s over. He’s dead. He’s _dead_. Just kill me, too and be done with it.” 

Damien’s hand doesn’t waver when he points the gun. 

***

“Did you ever hear about my first day at Med?” Will asks, staring up at the ceiling because he’s wide awake and doesn’t know what else to do. 

Usually they’re drunk at this point. Never drunk enough to make the sex feel invalid, but they’ve typically got enough liquid courage in them that they can pretend their actions are a result of that and nothing else. This time had been different. Three patients had died in their care, all in the span of six hours. They’d both just needed to feel something more than failure and loss and sadness. 

Now that the act of sex itself is over, though, they’re lying side-by-side in Will’s bed; sweaty, still a little out of breath, and completely lost about what to do next. 

Connor rolls his head towards him and raises his eyebrows. _What?_ His expression reads. _You’re so important that your first day is a thing of legend?_

Will laughs at the silent incredulity. He’s found, in the past few months, that Connor’s air of self-entitlement doesn’t bother him as much as it once had. Maybe because he can see, now, everything that’s trying to press up against it, right under the surface. 

_Lost little boy_ , his mom would have called him. _Lost little boy just trying to find his way home._

Connor still looks like he’s coming home every time they’re together. 

“The guy with the grenade?” Will presses, still grinning a little bit. 

Connor’s expression immediately shifts. “No.” He shifts a little bit, so he can get an elbow under him and prop his head on his hand. “Grenade?” 

Will doesn’t bother miming the other man’s position, stays lying flat on his back even though Connor is raised slightly now. It should make the balance of power between them feel uneven, but it doesn’t. 

“Yeah, this guy in the ED,” Will shakes his head a little, recalling the event. “He stood up on a chair and started ranting. Something about being the apocalypse. That if you thought Ebola was bad…then he blew himself up with a hand grenade.” 

Will glances over just in time to see Connor swallow thickly. “No one ever told me that.”

“It’s why they redid the whole Emergency Department.” Will sniffs and looks away again. “I wasn’t gonna stay in Chicago. Planned on heading back to New York after that day. My first and last.” He pauses, thinking back on everything that has changed since then. “God, Jay gave me such crap for it. Thought I couldn’t stick with anything.” 

“Did you get hurt?” He tries to say it casually, but it’s so far from the first question most people have when they ask about that day. And it doesn’t make sense. Asking if _anyone_ got hurt, if anyone died, that would make sense. 

But Will himself had obviously walked away from the event unscathed, so there’s really only one rational conclusion to be drawn from why that would be Connor’s first reaction to hearing about the terrorist attack that had all of Chicago up in arms for exactly one day. He smiles when he figures it out. “Why? You care about me or something?” He says it playfully, teasing. He teases Connor a lot. Mostly because it’s fun, and the other man is painfully uptight sometimes. 

Like now. 

“Yeah, maybe I do.” He snaps, a little too harshly. “Why does everything have to be a joke with you? You’re lying there telling me that some…what? Bio-terrorist? Literally blew himself up in front of you, in _our_ ED, and you’re acting like that wasn’t a big deal.”

Sometimes Connor reacts to stuff like this and it pisses Will off. He’ll bite back just as hard, harder even, and they wind up screaming at each other until someone walks away angry. Today isn’t going to be one of those times. 

“No, it was a big deal.” Will admits, staying calm despite the other man’s anger. “I thought everyone was gonna die, for a second. I thought I was gonna die.” 

Connor’s breath hitches. 

“I didn’t.” He says. He rolls his head back once again and looks at his lover. He makes sure his expression is as open and nonthreatening as he can. “No one did. It ended up being a pretty good first day.” 

“And that’s why you stayed?”

“That,” Will nods, “and to prove my brother wrong. I love doing that.”

Connor laughs. It’s gentle and genuine and makes something deep in Will’s gut, something that’s twisted up tight nearly all of the time, unwind a little. Takes some of the pressure away. 

“You know…” Connor’s biting his bottom lip now, something that Will’s seen him do from time to time when he’s nervous. “Sometimes you look…” he takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “Sometimes you look like you don’t wanna be here.” 

Will finds himself actually taking offence to those words. If there’s one thing in his life that actually makes him feel content, even marginally, it’s _this_. This thing he has with Connor. And to hear that the other man can’t see that, can’t tell the difference in his moods…well, it’s a little disappointing, to say the least. 

He clenches his teeth and looks away, studies a crack in the ceiling as if it could offer him answers. 

“Hey, no, that’s not what I meant.” Connor sounds truly upset now, Will hears that, but when the other man lays a hand on his shoulder Will still flinches. “Not this.” He continues with a quiet chord of desperation. “I didn’t mean this. Us.” 

Will inhales sharply, because that’s the closest either of them have ever come to acknowledging this thing between them with actual words. 

He doesn’t respond, not verbally, but he makes his body stay still and keeps his breathing even. Connor’s hand doesn’t move, and eventually he can feel himself relaxing a little, the tension seeping out of him by fractions. 

“I just meant,” he takes a deep breath and makes a show of choosing his next words carefully. “At work sometimes. When you think no one’s watching. You get this look like you wanna run away.” 

Will closes his eyes. He moves one hand out from behind his head and places it over Connor’s, still resting right above his heart. He squeezes tightly. “Sometimes I do.”

***

They say your life flashes before your eyes in the moments right before you die. 

Will’s been in serval near-death situations and can attest, at least from his personal experiences, that that’s a load of crap. You don’t flash _back_ to everything that’s already happened. You flash _forward_. You see the kids you’ll never have; the love you’ll never find. You see the places you could have gone, and the experiences you could have had. You see the future, and for one blinding moment it, and you, and the whole world is perfect. 

Then it happens. 

The bomb goes off. The fire gets too hot to stand. The last tendrils of consciousness float away. Someone pulls the trigger. 

Will’s no stranger to fights he can’t win. He’s been in more than his fair share over the years. Jay used to think that he went looking for them. 

_“Are you actually suicidal?”_ His brother had screamed at him once, right outside an ER in Rockford. _“Because this isn’t normal, Will. You act like you don’t care whether or not you die and…man, it’s starting to scare me, okay? It’s really starting to scare me.”_

Nothing had changed after that night. Nothing except that Will had stopped calling Jay when he got into trouble like that. Because Jay hadn’t deserved it, and Will hadn’t known how to stop. 

He had, eventually. For the most part. Some days he thinks he’d just grown out of it. Maybe Dr. Charles could have given him a better theory, had he ever bothered to talk to the man about more than patient consults. Too late now. 

He’s about to die again. Maybe he was meant to all those years ago. Maybe he’s been living on borrowed time and this is just the universe finally correcting itself. Whatever the reason, he’s about to die. He’s about to _die_ , and all he can see is the future he’ll never have. It comes to him in waves: perfect snapshots of a story untold. 

He’s almost smiling when the gun goes off.

***

“Hey,” Connor’s face brightens when he catches sight of him. And that – the other man’s genuine joy as soon as he walks into the room – makes Will’s gut swoop out from under him. 

That’s the moment he knows it’s going to be love someday. 

“Hey,” he echoes, trying for casual even as the entire dynamic between them shifts on its axis. “How was work?” He sits down at the table across from the other man and shrugs off his jacket without a second thought. He hadn’t planned on coming by Molly’s tonight, hadn’t talked to Connor at all, or even known for sure if he would be here. Yet he doesn’t stop to even consider that the other man might be waiting for someone else, that Will is intruding, unwelcome. He knows he’s not. 

“Had eight cases of food poisoning in the ED,” Connor says, simultaneously waving down a waitress and ordering Will a double whiskey. “Then I had to surgically remove six marbles, three buttons, and silver dollar from a nine-year-old’s digestive tract.” 

Will grimaces a little, but it’s mostly for show. “Sounds fun.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Connor agrees sarcastically, but it’s followed by a wide grin. “How was your day off?” 

Will looks down at the table; there’s a chip in the wood surface that he starts picking at with his thumbnail. “Fine.” 

“Yeah,” Connor says after a few beats, tone drenched with doubt. “Not really buying that.” 

Will snorts but looks up all the same. Connor’s eyes, expressive as ever, are swimming with curiosity and concern. Will shrugs. “Went to see my old man.” 

Connor nods once, slowly, and then bites his lip. It occurs to Will then that while he knows quite a lot about the elder Rhodes’ – through both the notoriety of the family’s presence in Chicago, and Connor’s infrequent but passionate rantings about the man – the same can’t be said about Connor. In fact, Will doesn’t think he’s ever mentioned his father in Connor’s presence before now. 

Well, that’s one thing him and Jay have in common, he supposes: an almost physical inability to talk about their dad with anybody besides each other. The list of their similarities is pretty short, so Will likes to keep track. 

“And how…” Connor starts, but is almost immediately interrupted by the arrival of Will’s whiskey and Connor’s second beer. 

They both mutter their thanks to the waitress, and Will empties his whole glass before she’s half a foot away from them. “Whoa,” Connor says, watching him with the barest traces of distress. “One of those nights, huh?”

Will doesn’t think twice about reaching out and snagging Connor’s beer bottle away from him. He takes a long pull before putting it back on the coaster in front of him and something about that, the intimacy of that particular action, shifts the atmosphere between them. 

“You wanna get out of here?” Will asks, cocking an eyebrow and playing at casual. As if he doesn’t feel like his blood is on fire. 

“It’s early.” Connor says carefully, glancing ever so subtly around the bar. “Let’s just hang out here for a minute, okay? Get some food.” 

“Not hungry.” Will says shortly. He’s trying his best to not be a dick to Connor right now; because he knows the other man doesn’t deserve it, and he’s been working really hard on not taking his temper out on innocent bystanders. 

“C’mon,” Connor presses, smiling a little. “I’ll let you pay.” 

Will snorts, but there’s only the barest traces of actual humor in it. “Look, man, I think I’m just gonna take off.” He pushes his chair back and makes to grab at his jacket. 

“Will, wait.” He sounds more desperate than he strictly ought to, in a situation like this. Almost like he thinks he’ll lose something a lot more important than a random evening spent together, if Will walks away from him right now. 

“What?” He asks tiredly. “What do you want, Connor?” 

The other man blinks owlishly at him for a few long, drawn out moments. In the background the hubbub of Molly’s steadies on – people talk and laugh and drink. A few of them love. Fewer still hate. The whole world continues to spin and exist and flourish and rise and fall and rise again and again. And then there’s the two of them, Connor Rhodes and Will Halstead, standing still in a den of chaos. 

“I wanna know why you came here tonight.” Connor finally speaks, though his words do nothing to lessen the power of the vortex fostered between them. 

It’s a power that Will aches to lose himself within. “I just…felt like it.” 

“Why?” Connor asks. He sounds more than curious. More than desperate. He sounds like he might die if he doesn’t hear the answer to that question. Will feels like he might die if he doesn’t give it.

“I wanted to see you.” 

They stare at each other for a long time after that, completely lost to everything else around them. 

“Okay,” Connor finally breathes. Will wonders how many stars had died in between that word and the one before it. He feels like probably trillions. “Okay.” He repeats, and nods once, firmly. “Then you’re right.” 

“I usually am.” Will agrees. “About what this time, though?” 

The world comes back into focus a little bit at a time, too slow to change anything. 

Connor licks his lips and fixes him with a gaze that’s startling in its intensity. “We should get out of here.”

***

There had been a girl in New York. 

Stephanie. 

Will had fallen head over heels in love with her in a matter of months. He’d just started to seriously consider buying her a ring – getting down on one knee and doing that whole cliché proposal thing because he was so fucking gone for her that it didn’t even feel like a cliché anymore – when she’d broken his heart. 

It hadn’t been an epic thing. She hadn’t died or been drafted or anything like that. She just hadn’t loved him the way he’d loved her. He can see now, with the clarity of hindsight, that it had been better to end it when they had rather than continue on with a life together where one person was more invested than the other. 

But it had hurt. 

It had hurt so bad Will hadn’t been sure if he’d ever recover. 

He’d spiraled then. Harder than he had since his mom had died. He was alone in New York. He couldn’t reach out to Jay, and his friends – if one could call them that – from the practice were more likely to offer booze and clubs, sex and drugs, than anything resembling a shoulder to cry on. 

He would have lost his license if they’d followed proper procedure in reporting his behavior, but they were all so culpable in his actions that they hadn’t wanted to risk the fallout. So they’d just asked him to leave. 

And Will had. He’d left and gone all the way to Sudan. It was only then that he’d started to heal. 

And all of that, knowing how close he’d come to losing everything, was why he hadn’t so much as flinched at the thought of telling his DNR patient the truth about the placebo. He would have handled it back in New York, had the consequences of his actions unfolded the way they should have. At least with Jennifer Baker, it would have been for a good reason. Lose everything to save one thing. 

Will’s always been an all-or-nothing type of guy. 

But Connor had stopped him. 

_“The world needs good doctors, you ass.”_ Hot in his ear as Will had struggled halfheartedly to get away. 

Maybe he’d wanted to be stopped. 

Maybe he’d been waiting for someone to risk one thing to save everything. To save him.

TBC...


	2. Part 2

***

The gunshot echoes in the barren warehouse, louder than anything in life could ever manage. The deafening crack of death. 

It had happened in a microsecond. Nothing slowed for dramatic realization. 

Damien Williams had turned the gun he’d been pointing at Will on himself. Had fired without pause, without doubt. 

Will’s reaction is the only thing delayed. He stares at the corpse on the ground for a long time before his brain catches up with what had just happened. By the time it does he’s breathing too hard – because his body had gotten the memo almost instantly. 

_Don’t panic_ , he thinks, a single clear thought trying and failing to override the rest. _It’s over now_. 

But it doesn’t feel over. 

_I should be dead. Why am I not dead?_

It feels like cheating and fear and a relief so powerful that it’s probably a lie. 

His hands are shaking. So is the rest of him. 

He pulls himself to his feet slowly, the pain that he’s still in acting as a minute counterbalance to the tornado of thoughts and feelings he can’t control just yet. 

He feels like he’s going to vomit. 

He still feels like he might die.

_Don’t touch the gun_ , Jay’s voice is loud and clear in his head. _You didn’t pull the trigger but they’ll think you did. Make sure the evidence is on your side._

He doesn’t touch the gun. 

He doesn’t touch anything. 

He stands up; thinks, _I should walk away_ , but doesn’t. Nothing continues on around him. Everyone is dead. Everyone except him. _Maybe the world ended_ , he tries to get his breathing to even out, but fails. _Maybe this is the apocalypse._

_Maybe this is hell._

***

Will pushes Connor against the door as soon as it closes behind them. 

The other man gasps at the rough handling, but it’s arousal, not fear or displeasure, that reads like a sonnet in his actions. He pushes himself against Will, letting him feel the heavy weight of his arousal against his thigh. He opens his mouth willingly, with a tiny groan, when Will moves to deepen the kiss. 

“Are you sure…” Connor pulls back a little. His eyes are so blown with desire that Will can barely make out more than the black of his pupils. “Are you sure this is what you –”

“Shh.” Will responds, interrupting the other man’s well-meaning but ultimately unneeded attempts to check the status of his emotional distress. “Wanna fuck you. That’s what I need.” 

Connor fists the back of Will’s t-shirt tightly, his lower body pressing against his in tiny motions that he’s probably not even aware of. “Yeah,” he swallows thickly and nods rapidly. “Yeah, do it.” 

And that’s all the approval Will needs. 

He gets them both naked and laid out on Connor’s bed in minutes that feel like hours. Connor spreads his legs willingly, even eagerly, and Will stops for a breath to consider that while they’ve never been together in this way before, the man beneath him has obviously been craving it. He smiles, a tiny bit of his desperation floating away. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted this?” He asks, dipping his head to lick, bite, and then lick again, soothingly, at the column of Connor’s throat. 

The other man’s bare dick presses against Will’s stomach when he arches into him with such force that most of his body leaves the mattress. “Wasn’t sure,” he pants, trying between words to catch his breath, “wasn’t sure you’d want it like this.” 

His confession makes Will pull back a little, causing Connor to whine deep in the back of his throat. Will shushes him gently and runs a hand through his hair almost lovingly. Out of all the words that filter through his mind as a possible response to that, Will settles on the four that feel the most important. “You can trust me.”

Connor’s chest is heaving, his body gleaming with a fine layer of sweat and desire that makes him look ethereal in the dim light. “I think I do.” He says like it’s a revelation. Which, to a man with as many trust issues as Connor Rhodes, it probably is. 

Will grins wide and leans down, kisses his lover square on the mouth at the same moment he thrusts their hips together hard. 

“Will,” Connor gasps. “Will, please.” 

And Will can’t say no to him. Wouldn’t even if he could. 

For the first time, he’s the one who feels like he’s coming home. 

***

Will’s not surprised that, in the end, Jay had found him. 

_A day late and a dollar short_ , their father’s words mock him eternally. If Damien Williams hadn’t killed himself they might have been true, and that hurts worse than all his injuries combined. 

The cop car rolls up just as Will is exiting the warehouse. His plan had been…well, he hadn’t had a plan beyond getting out of there. Walk, maybe. Walk until he’d found someone alive to help him. 

But reality had found him, first. 

Technically, he supposes, Hank Voight had found him first. 

“Doc,” his brother’s boss greets him carefully, approaching with a raised weapon and a confused expression. “Will,” he amends, “are you okay? Is he still inside?” He nods towards the building behind them, ready to protect him at all costs. 

“No,” Will croaks. He starts to shake his head, but almost immediately stops. He’s still so disoriented. Has a concussion, maybe. Has to be careful with his body and the way he moves it. “Yes,” he contradicts himself, then adds quickly, “but he’s dead. They’re both dead.” 

Voight looks at him then, studying him carefully. “Did you kill them?”

“No.” He repeats, firmly this time. “I didn’t.” 

“Will,” Voight steps closer to him. They don’t have much time, before others join this moment. “Tell me right now. We’ll protect you. Do you understand me? I’ll _protect_ you.” 

_“It’s a specialized unit.”_ Jay had said, the night his brother had called him, at Voight’s plea, to save a young man’s life. 

Will might have had a death wish, once upon a time, but Jay has a hero complex so great that it’ll likely be his ultimate undoing. 

“I didn’t.” He insists. “I didn’t touch the gun. You can check.” 

Eventually the older man nods. “Good.” He says. “That’s real good, Doc.” 

The rest of it happens fast. Others arrive, including his brother. Jay and Erin stay at his side while Voight and Detective Dawson go into the warehouse. _Clearing the scene_ , Jay tells him softly, when he sees his brother’s distress. “Everything’s alright now, Will.” 

Will knows his brother is telling him the truth, that everything is fine, now. But the words still feel like a lie. Everything feels like a lie. 

“We have to get him to the hospital.” Erin is saying, touching Jay’s shoulder in a way that screams domestic familiarity. 

“Right.” His brother agrees. “Will, we have to…are you listening to me, little brother?” 

It’s been so long since Jay’s used that endearment with him that the shock of hearing it works wonders to pull him out of the daze he’d been floating in. 

All of a sudden the sirens are deafening, and the lights from the cop cars – squad and undercover alike, though he doesn’t know when the former had arrived – are blinding. “I don’t want to go in an ambulance.” He says resolutely, meeting Jay’s gaze. “You can drive me.”

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea.” Erin says carefully, but Will is stubborn. 

“I’m not critical.” He says, putting on his best doctor voice and hoping like hell that he’s not telling them lies. “And I couldn’t stand…” Ambulances are sterile and bright, they reek of urgency and death. “Just…please? Jay, please.” 

His brother folds like a house of cards. “Fine.” He agrees. “But we’re not going to Med.”

Will double-takes hard. “Why?” He demands. 

“Will,” It’s Erin’s voice, soothing and firm at the same time. “We’re almost an hour out of the city. We’re taking you to the closest ER. We have to.” 

Will notices then that the squad cars don’t say _Chicago, PD_ on them. He starts to wonder about things like jurisdiction, and the stretch of Hank Voight’s influence. But, all of that – the logistics of the police investigation, the questions that will surely come up eventually – is Jay’s world. And Will’s content to leave it that way. 

“ED,” he corrects Erin instead, as they begin a slow trek towards his brother’s car. 

“Yeah,” she says, trying to lighten the atmosphere between them when Jay has to put his arm around Will’s shoulders to help him stay steady. “Every time you say that, I still think of erectile dysfunction.” 

Will huffs a laugh, which causes him to all but double over with pain. “Easy,” Jay says to him. “Just take it easy, man.” 

“We’ll have to change the name of that next, then.” Will continues the banter, as soon as he feels steady enough. “Penile dysfunction, or something.” 

Jay helps him into the car once they get there. Probably the gentlest he’s ever been, helping someone into this particular backseat. “That’d be PD.” He counters, getting in right next to Will while Erin heads for the driver’s seat. 

Will hums, letting his head fall against the back of the back of the seat as his whole body slouches. “EM.” He breathes as Erin starts driving. Jay’s hand never leaves his shoulder. “Erectile _mal_ function.” 

“I think we have a winner.” Erin declares, tone upbeat enough that Will can almost ignore that she’s driving about twenty miles over the speed limit with the lights flashing and the sirens blaring, in her rush to get him to the closest medical facility. 

***

“I’ll bring him back.” Jay promises. It would have been enough to make the declaration to himself, but Dr. Rhodes is still here, hovering the way people do when they’re terrified, and Jay feels like he owes the man something to make up for the way he’d behaved earlier. “Everything’s gonna be okay.” 

“Don’t say that just because you feel bad about before.” It’s almost scary, how well this man he barely knows can read him. Then again, maybe it’s something else. Maybe Dr. Rhodes is just that good at reading _Will_ , and he and his brother are alike enough that the skillset transfers. 

“I’m not.” He declares all the same. “He’s my brother. I’ll bring him back.” 

Dr. Rhodes takes a deep breath and nods once, accepting his words as the truth that they are. “I’ll be waiting.”

***

“Should I call Dr. Rhodes?” 

Will’s head snaps up at Erin’s question, startling the nightshift attending, and making himself wince. 

“Connor knows what’s going on?” 

Jay can’t accurately pinpoint the emotion in his brother’s tone, and that’s strange enough in itself to make him pay attention. “We talked to him earlier,” he explains, figuring that he’ll leave the exact details of that interaction unsaid for the time being. “He was concerned.” He pauses as his cop brain goes straight to worst case scenario. “Is there a reason we _shouldn’t_ call him?” 

Will rolls his eyes. “Not everyone’s a suspect, Jay.” 

He breathes a sigh of relief that probably only Erin can hear, as her hand comes up and squeezes his elbow reassuringly. “Good.” He says simply. “I’ll make the call.”

“Jay.” Will says, stopping the older man in his tracks. 

“What?” He asks, when Will doesn’t follow up with anything. 

“ _I’ll_ make the call,” Erin jumps in, reading something about this moment that Jay can’t. “Stay here with your brother.”

_Oh_ , he realizes dumbly. 

Will’s not looking at him anymore. Instead he’s watching every move the doctor working on him makes with what Jay can only assume is an unfairly critical eye. Which is probably acting as a very piss poor method of distracting himself from the fear. And if he’s asking Jay to stay with him, not leave for even long enough to make a phone call, then it’s probably quite a lot of fear. 

Sometimes Jay forgets that not everyone is a cop. 

He moves closer then, until he’s right at the foot of the hospital bed, as close to his brother as he can be. “So, what’s the verdict, Doc?” 

Will and the man treating him start talking at the same time, which has Jay biting his lip to try and hide his grin. 

It might take some time, but Will is going to be okay. 

***

“Hey, why are you up?” Connor’s tone is more concerned than annoyed, which gives Will a pretty clear insight into the other man’s thoughts. He forces himself to not cringe. 

“Had to take a piss,” he mutters, not turning away from where he’s staring into the refrigerator. 

“You hungry?” Connor asks, trying for casual and falling just a hair short. 

“No.” Will sighs and shuts the door, turns towards his lover. Suddenly he’s tired. Too tired, really, considering he’s been asleep for the better part of four days. 

He knows his body needs the rest, but without the constant commotion of work and the ED, Will’s waking hours, few as they are, have been spent obsessing over the events that had taken place in that warehouse with Damien. 

“You need one of the Vicodin?” Connor presses, his medical instincts kicking into gear. “It’s been long enough. Hell, you’ve barely taken any.” 

Will shrugs, but then changes his mind and shakes his head. “I’m good, man.” He sighs. “Think I’m gonna lay on the couch for a while. Change of scenery.” 

Five minutes later, Will is indeed stretched out on the couch, but it’s with his head resting in Connor’s lap. Which isn’t exactly what he’d imagined, granted, but Connor’s been reluctant to leave his side lately. Has only taken a few four or five hours shifts at the hospital since Will had come home, in fact, and only then when Jay or Erin or Voight had been here to stay with him. 

He likes having the other man here. More than he’s willing to admit, actually, but a part of him is beginning to feel guilty. Which is what prompts him to say, “You don’t have to do this, y’know,” a few minutes later. One of Connor’s hands is running through his hair rhythmically, but it stops abruptly at Will’s words. 

“Are you talking about this,” he tugs gently at a few of the dark red strands that Will hasn’t even washed properly in days, “or…”

“Or.” Will sighs, closing his eyes and relaxing when the other man’s soothing motions continue. “You don’t have to babysit me. I’m fine.” 

“I’m worried,” Connor says after a long pause, “that you’re really not.”

“You read my chart,” Will argues. “Superficial bruising, cracked ribs, a mild concussion, and my kidneys are fine. The chance of a relapse in any form is miniscule.” 

“Yeah,” Connor agrees, but it sounds more like the beginning of a sentiment than the end of one. “Your injuries aren’t what I’m worried about.” 

***

“How was he?” Connor asks him, voice low as they hover just outside Will’s apartment. 

Jay had stopped thinking of this man as _Dr. Rhodes_ a few days ago now, but it feels like it’s been longer. Like he and Connor have always been on the same team. The _protect Will at all costs_ team. And while Jay’s the founding president, Connor has quickly worked his way up the ranks to second in command. 

At the younger man’s question, Jay sighs deeply and runs a hand over his face. “Quiet.” He settles on saying eventually. “Withdrawn?” He shakes his head. “I dunno. Not right.” 

Connor bites his lip hard and stares at the wall behind him, almost as if he could see through it to the man on the other side. “You know my mom was clinically depressed.” He says this without looking at him. 

Jay narrows his gaze. “Yeah, I know.” He agrees. “I mean, I remember it in the news when she died. You were young.” 

“Ten.” Connor nods. Finally, he glances back at him. Jay almost wishes that he hadn’t, because now that he’s seen the fear in the other man’s eyes there’s no pretending that this conversation is anything other than what it is. “I remember how it was for her, though. How she acted. The signs.” 

Jay’s shaking his head hard and fast, barely aware of the motion beyond the sharp pounding in his skull. “That’s not Will, man. That’s not what this is.” 

“You just said he doesn’t seem right.” Connor reminds him sharply. “We’d be stupid to ignore that.” 

“Hey, look,” Jay says, navigating away from his own anger consciously, because he knows that Connor is just trying to help. That the other man has some issues left over from the childhood traumas he’d suffered and that that’s all this is. The ricochets. “He might be a little messed up right now, but Will’s not…” 

Only he’d accused him of it once himself, hadn’t he? _“You act like you don’t care whether or not you die.”_ That had been so long ago, now. Years. Will’s changed since then. They both have. But still.

“Jay?” Connor’s face is a roadmap of fear. 

The detective swallows thickly. “Just…keep an eye on him.” 

***

“Damien was a _fixer_ ,” Will says with a small snort. Voight and Jay are in the hospital room with them and maybe Connor isn’t technically supposed to be here for this part, but Will had asked if he could stay and the Sergeant hadn’t even batted an eye at saying yes. 

Will always gives him crap about his family’s name, the notoriety and wealth, but it seems like Will has most of the Chicago PD in his back pocket. That he is, despite not technically being one of them, very much accepted and loved, _protected_ , like family. And that, Connor knows, is not a source of power to be taken lightly. 

He won’t be complaining about it anytime soon, if his partner’s influence allows him access to this particular moment. 

_Huh_ , he doubles back on his thoughts a microsecond later. He’s never thought of Will as his _partner_ before. Has never thought of anyone that way, in fact. Not even the few people in his past who had truly deserved the title. _Well, that’s something_ , he acknowledges, but sticks it on the backburner for further analysis at a later time. 

“What do you mean, exactly, when you say _fixer_?” Jay presses. 

Will takes a deep breath and then another. “It wasn’t illegal.” 

“You said that before.” Jay nods his acceptance. Connor is a little confused, because this conversation had just started and there is no before. But then he realizes – _before_ before. Before, when Will had been trapped in a warehouse and called Jay for help. 

“It’s a type of high-end house cleaning,” Voight jumps in. “It’s legal, on paper at least. And a lot of money and power go into making sure no one ever looks beyond that paper.”

“Damien had clients,” Will tells them, nodding at Voight’s description. “Models, actors, CEOs, even a few politicians. They’d get into trouble – whatever kind, I never asked – and Damien would fix it.” 

Connor doesn’t say anything, because it wouldn’t help, but he knows exactly what kind of service Will is referring to. His father, back in the day, had called in a _consultant_ from time to time, to handle certain unseemly matters. He’s starting to understand a little bit better now, why Will had hated him in the beginning. His bitterness towards the rich and powerful is rooted in a lot more than growing up blue-collar.

“And what did _you_ do, exactly?” Jay asks, pulling Connor away from his thoughts. 

He sees it when Will cringes. “Sometimes people got hurt. Sometimes Damien got hurt. He’d call me, I’d consult, medically. Treat them if necessary, and not ask any questions.” He pauses and stares directly at his brother. “It was good money.”

Jay looks so spectacularly guilty that even Connor, hanging on the fringes of this moment, feels sympathy for him. He can’t imagine how Will is feeling. 

“And what about what happened tonight?” Voight is the only one with enough power to break the tension between the brothers. “Can we go over the details of exactly what went on after Damien Williams first approached you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Will’s nodding, but Connor’s had his eye on the other man’s heart monitor since he’d walked in and immediately notices the sudden change. 

“No, I think it’s best if that waits,” he jumps in. His first words since the questioning had begun, and they’re all looking at him now. He points towards the machine. “Unhealthy spike in BP. Medically, I think this should wait.”

Will glances back at the monitor, and then at him. “It’s fine.” 

“It’s dangerous.” He counters. “Too much stress could cause a repertory attack, or at the very least, delayed healing.”

Will nods then, accepting Connor’s decree so easily that the other man can’t help but assume that his initial argument hadn’t been much more than a token protest made for show, or out of pure reflex. 

“No, yeah, you need to take it easy,” Jay immediately agrees, shutting his notebook and reaching forward to pat Will’s ankle affectionately. “We can do this later.” 

“Jay,” Voight starts. 

“We can do this later.” The detective repeats, much more firmly at his boss. 

Voight folds so fast that Connor wonders whether this is the first time he’s seen the lengths Jay will go to in order to protect his brother. He’d bet his family’s fortune that it’s not. 

“Yeah,” the older man agrees, if not a bit reluctantly. “Take care of yourself, Doc.” The nickname makes Will smile, the first real one Connor has seen since he’d arrived here. 

Once Voight and Jay are gone – the latter having only departed at Will’s verbal confirmation that he would be alright – Connor lets himself get a better look at his…at Will.

He reaches out slowly when he touches the other man’s face, makes sure he can see him coming. Will cringes a little when Connor’s fingers brush over the worst of the bruises, but he doesn’t try to pull away. That’s promising on several levels. 

“Y’know,” he starts, hating the way Will braces himself like he’s about to be attacked. “If you wanted attention that bad, Molly’s does a karaoke night once a month. I’m sure a couple verses of the Pina Colada song would’ve sufficed.”

Will’s laugh sounds more like relief than humor. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, groaning a little as he settles back down against the pillows, “for next time.” 

There won’t ever be a next time, if Connor’s got anything to say about it. He knows that Will hates his money, and after tonight he understands a little bit better why, but Connor would spend all of it – his whole trust fund and every dollar he’s ever earned on top of that – to make sure that Will is never in danger like this again. 

The passionate force of his own thoughts surprise him. Same way thinking _partner_ earlier had.

“Hey,” Will pulls him out of his head with a single word. “Are _you_ okay? You look pale.” 

“Just the lighting.” Connor smiles evenly. _Focus_ , he reminds himself. It’s like surgery. You have to see the big picture but concentrate on each movement individually, otherwise people die. “Relax, man. Everything’s alright now.” 

“Yeah,” Will breathes, sinking back into the pillows and closing his eyes. “Everyone keeps saying that.” 

“You don’t believe us?” Connor quips, trying for casual. 

But Will’s half asleep by the time he responds, and his words are slurred together and probably far more honest than he’d been aiming for. “Kinda feel like I’m still about to die.”

***

“You think I’m _suicidal_?” Will spits the word with more force and venom than Connor’s ever heard him say anything. He cringes. 

“I don’t –” 

“Is this what you meant last night?” The redhead plows right through his attempts to defend himself. “When you said you weren’t worried about my _physical_ injuries?” 

“If I could interrupt, for just a second.” Dr. Charles tries to wage peace between them, but his calm demeanor and soothing voice aren’t working their usual magic on Will’s anger. 

“No, no,” the other man shakes his head. “You can’t.” 

“Will,” Connor tries to stop him, but once Will stands up he knows he’s lost. 

“No, you guys go ahead and talk.” He insists with sarcastic sincerity as he starts heading towards the front door. “This is obviously more about Connor’s issues than mine.” He bites, making the man in question cringe noticeably. Will pauses when he sees that, and almost looks regretful for a moment. But then he shakes his head and turns his back on both of them. 

“Well,” Dr. Charles says, looking less surprised than Connor thinks is appropriate after Will slams the door behind him. “That was something.” 

“I’m sorry.” Connor tips his head back with a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry about him. Maybe I shouldn’t have done this.” 

“On the contrary, Dr. Rhodes,” the older man insists, sounding hopeful of all things. “Dr. Halstead’s reaction actually tells us quite a lot.” 

Connor lifts his head again to meet the other man’s gaze. “Like what?” 

“Well, for one,” he begins, with that knowing lilt in his tone that makes everyone else in the room feel irrevocably stupider than they really are, “I don’t believe that he’s suicidal.” Connor’s eyes go wide. “Or even depressed, for that matter.” 

“But he…” he waves his hand a little, because they’ve already had this conversation and there’s no point in repeating it. 

“Dr. Halstead…Will.” He corrects with a meaningful head tilt. “Will has suffered a traumatic event and is reacting accordingly. There’s a big difference, Dr. Rhodes, between trauma and mental illness.” 

“So you think he’s right.” Connor accuses, more angrily than he’d intended. “You think I’m projecting because of what happened to my mom.” 

“I don’t believe that projection is the right word to use, no.” He shakes his head and remains calm, as he always does. 

“Then what is?” Connor demands. 

Dr. Charles is silent for a long time, watching Connor with such an intense focus that he might have wilted beneath its force, had he not grown up surrounded by the constant weight of unfair judgement. 

“I believe,” Dr. Charles says slowly, studying him as if waiting for an attack, “that you loved your mother very much, and are still effected by the reality of having lost her to something that you couldn’t control.” He takes a deep breath. “And that now, many years later, you’re faced with a situation where someone else is behaving in a way that reminds you of that. And that’s frightening for you. Incredibly frightening. Because you also love that person quite a lot.” 

***

“I’m not an idiot, Will.” 

“Good for you.” The younger man snaps. He’s angry at Jay’s self-important tone because it reminds him way too much of Connor’s to be comforting in this moment. Mostly, he’s just angry. 

“You’re gone for him, little brother.” 

Will stops pacing and meets Jay’s self-satisfied, knowing expression head on. “No I’m not.” 

“You can’t lie.” He snorts a little, like this conversation they’re having isn’t scaring the shit out of him. “In general, you suck at it. And with me, you _really_ suck at it.” 

“I’m not _gone_ for anybody.” He insists. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know that you didn’t even stop to ask me _who_ I was talking about.” Jay says evenly. Will curses under his breath. “I know that while you were in the hospital you didn’t calm down until he was in the room with us.” 

“That’s not…” but Will doesn’t know how to argue with what Jay is saying. And that’s okay, he supposes, because his brother doesn’t have an issue continuing to talk. 

“I know that that doctor you had a crush on when you first started working at Med – Dr. Manning? You haven’t mentioned her in months.” Jay nods, if only to himself. “You haven’t mentioned anyone in months, in fact, which is the longest I’ve ever seen you go without at least bragging about a hookup.” 

Will crosses his arms over his chest and grunts. 

“There’s a certain way someone will act, when a person they love goes missing,” Jay says carefully. “And for a minute that’s all I thought it was, honestly. Something…unreciprocated.” 

Will can’t help but cringe at the very idea. 

“ _That_ ,” Jay points at him. “That right there, man. You’ve always worn your heart on your sleeve.” 

“Not everyone inherited dad’s poker face.” 

Jay chuckles a little, not nearly as put off by the comment as Will had expected. “You always get flustered like this when I call you out on liking someone. Did even when we were kids.”

“Yeah, I know,” Will sighs. “I broke your nose once in middle school because you wouldn’t stop giving me shit about liking Melanie Grayson.” 

Jay chuckles. “Case in point, man.”

“Yeah, well…” He trails off and glances away, staring very resolutely nothing.

“It doesn’t bother me, y’know.” Jay says gently, after a few seconds of silence. “If that’s something that you…” he takes a deep breath. “I just want you to be happy.”

Will looks over, finally, and meets his brother’s gaze. “I think I am.” 

It’s not what he’d meant to say. A part of him is still angry. Another part is still expecting death every time he turns a corner. But underneath all of that is something else: a feeling of absoluteness that his brother’s instincts had somehow honed in on and called him out on. 

For the first time in his life, Will feels like maybe he’s done searching. 

Jay’s responding grin is blinding. 

***

Connor doesn’t know that in a year from now everything will be different. 

In twelve months he won’t feel out of place or like he’s intruding when he’s in Will’s apartment without him, because in twelve months it’ll be his apartment, too. 

They’ll have agreed to cohabitation on the basis that they see each other every day at work, anyway, and seem to be doing fine. And even though others will have warned them that three months is too quick for a step of that magnitude, they’ll both have behaved like the stubborn assholes they’ve always been, and been better for it. 

A year from now they’ll be used to hearing the other say _I love you_. Connor will say it less than he thinks it. And he’ll hate himself a little bit for that, but his lover will be understanding. So ridiculously understanding, in fact, that Connor will feel even worse because of it. It’s something he’ll still have to work on, even a year from now. But maybe two years on, or three or eight or fifteen, he’ll get it right. 

A year from now they’ll be happy together. It won’t be perfect, because nothing ever is, but it’ll be close. A hair’s breath away from fiction. And one day, almost exactly a year from today, they’ll be sitting on the couch together – Will reading a book, Connor a medical journal (he’ll find himself more prone to cracking one here and there when they’re strewn all about his living space) – and the redhead will look up out of nowhere with a tiny smile on his face and say, “Huh.”

Connor will stop what he’s doing, of course, and meet his lover’s gaze with a quirked eyebrow. “Huh?” He’ll repeat it like a question because he’ll want to know. 

“I thought about this once.” He’ll say, tilting his head to the side. 

“Thought about what?” Connor will ask, curious. 

“The two of us together like this,” he’ll shrug like it doesn’t matter. Connor will know that it does. “Just…normal. Kinda forever.”

“Kinda?” Connor will make a face that’s playfully insulted. Will’ll kick him in the thigh and a mock fight will erupt from the movements. It’ll end with the two of them in bed together, sated and happy, but that’s how most of their evenings will have a tendency to end, come the future, so there won’t be anything odd in that. 

It’ll be a year from now before Will tells Connor what he’d thought about in the seconds right before he knew he was going to die. 

It’ll be an important moment between them, when its time comes. 

But Connor doesn’t know, yet, that in a year everything will be different. 

All he knows for sure, right now, is that when Will gets home three hours after he’d stormed out, he’s massively relieved. He exhales with such force that he’s pretty sure at least five years of his life go with it. 

“I live here.” Will says when he sees Connor’s face, reads him so easily that it has to mean something. “Did you really think I wasn’t gonna come back?”

Connor swallows thickly. “Do you want _me_ to leave?” 

Sometimes when the two of them are together, the rest of the world just stops. It’s a scary, thrilling, breathtakingly momentous sensation every time. _Hey, look_ , the universe seems to be shouting directly at them, _this is something, pay attention to this_. 

It might take some time, but eventually they both do. 

“No,” Will breathes. “No, stick around. I want you to.” 

“That’s good,” he nods, blissfully unaware of the future that’s balancing on the razor’s edge of this interaction. He doesn’t know that in a year from now everything will be different; that this place will be his home, and that he’ll be happier than he’d previously believed himself capable. He doesn’t know that it’s all going to start right now. “Because I want to stay.” 

He exhales at the same moment Will smiles at him, genuine and absolute. 

The universe finally stops holding its breath. 

**End**.

**Author's Note:**

> Your thoughts and such are much appreciated :)


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